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Ethics

Deep Ecology & Virtue Ethics

Warwick Fox on an approach to the environment which is also a way of living.

Deep ecology is one of about nine major approaches to our relationship with the world around us that have been mapped out by environmental philosophers in recent years. I’m not going to discuss all these approaches here, but it might be useful simply to categorize them at the outset before going on to focus on the deep ecology approach. First there are those approaches that ascribe only a use value or instrumental value to the nonhuman world. This covers the approaches of unrestrained exploitation and expansionism, resource conservation and development, and resource preservation. Second are those approaches that argue for a criterion of moral consideration that would attribute an intrinsic value to at least some, and perhaps many, members or aspects of the nonhuman world.

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